With a fic in my heart and a song on my lips
I'm thinking about songfic. The main warning I wish to express is that I make copious reference to my own writing.
Pity the songfic. It's amongst the least credible genres of fanfic within fandom, and there is regrettably good reason for that. There's nothing like one of our favourite slashy guys standing up in a karaoke bar to warble 'Close to You' to their hitherto oblivious beloved to make many a reader hit the back button with unwonted energy.
But they are such a temptation. They offer to add the resonance of music and lyrics to the emotional force of a story. They combine the pleasures of fannish activity with another intellectual and aesthetic pleasure. They offer inspiration to a writer.
Of course, if you don't know the song, or detest it, even, your resonance goes flat. We all of us have different definitions of pleasure. And there are times for all of us when we really, really wish that a fellow fan had left their inspiration entirely private.
Songfic and me? Mea culpa... Stories that are totally songfic:
James and the Cold Gun, (Actually the song fic element is more strongly related to the song, 'A Thing Well Made' by The Muttonbirds, but how I could pass up the title...and I did incorporate the theme into the story); So Many Colours; Pictures of Sandburg (For which I totally got the idea when the spouse was listening to The Who's 'Pictures of Lily); Cloudbusting; Private Universe; Burning Clean; Three Strawpeople drabbles.
Stories that reference songs in their titles, where you might possibly regard the songs as soundtracks to the stories:
Living in the Gap; Strewn Towards a Heaven; Crossing the Line, Dirty Water.
Stories in the WIP and Dead end file that might have referenced a song or two:
West Horizon; Deserves a Quiet Night; Buried in the Backyard.
The shame of it all... :-) But still, I haven't done some things. I haven't had my guys sing - unless you count Blair singing along to Dr Hook to tease Jim in 'Living in the Gap'. I haven't quoted song lyrics in the body of the story. I don't think... (I sort of lie. Blair sings along to LA Woman in Coastal Shelf. Jim growls at him.)
Sometimes there's an unfortunate element of showing off in songfic. Besides wanting to borrow the emotional resonance of a song, the writer also wants to borrow the cred. And since cred is never something you can borrow, the attempt always fails.
But we persist in wanting to combine our pleasures: our boys and music. How many stories are there out there where one or both of the guys are singing in a band? Blair most commonly, presumably because he is a far more relaxed person than Jim. It's an irony, given that in his very musical family, GM is apparently very much a non-singer. But there is an irresistible attraction to Blair in leather pants, crouching down to roar out 'helllloooo, Cascade'. Although somewhere out there, there's a story that lets Jim borrow RB's talents and be a drummer. Scribe, maybe? Help? And in TS canon, Jim's musical appreciation is mentioned about as much as Blair's.
Still, as I look back over my own stories, I note that the notable songfic tends to be earlier. I could maybe argue that this indicates my maturing as a writer, but maturing implies immaturity somewhere along the line. Sometimes, that may well be the case. But I doubt (to borrow an example from SGA fandom) that Synecdochic's 'Freedom's Just Another Word' is an immature work. The story isn't songfic as such, but the author isn't ashamed to tap into the melancholy associations of the song's nostalgia for a happier time and a lost love.
'Isn't songfic as such'. Now that reminds me of discussions where it's claimed that Ursula Le Guin and Gene Wolfe don't write fantasy because they are good... And by golly, if I get a songfic bunny any time in the future, I will write the thing.
However, besides songfic, fans now have the options of fanmixes, and the idea of fannish soundtracks, and of course, vids. I have a storyteller's desire to make vids sometimes. Why has no-one ever made a TS vid to Elvis Costello's 'Every Day I Write the Book'? It's a consummate Blair POV song. I've heard songs I think are as good, but none that are better. I have lists in my head of songs that I would love to see as vids in a variety of fandoms.
Perhaps technology has overtaken the songfic. Almost anyone with access to a home computer can make vids. Even I could make a vid, if Windows Help wasn't such an oxymoron, and I wasn't such a late adopter.
But, y'know, when Sentinel Thursday offered its 'take back the songfic' challenge, like I said, I couldn't resist. Because songfic is always a pleasure for the writer, even if it's not always a pleasure for the reader, and really, I'm simply not in fandom to resist things.
Unless it's the guys doing karaoke.
Hmmm....
Pity the songfic. It's amongst the least credible genres of fanfic within fandom, and there is regrettably good reason for that. There's nothing like one of our favourite slashy guys standing up in a karaoke bar to warble 'Close to You' to their hitherto oblivious beloved to make many a reader hit the back button with unwonted energy.
But they are such a temptation. They offer to add the resonance of music and lyrics to the emotional force of a story. They combine the pleasures of fannish activity with another intellectual and aesthetic pleasure. They offer inspiration to a writer.
Of course, if you don't know the song, or detest it, even, your resonance goes flat. We all of us have different definitions of pleasure. And there are times for all of us when we really, really wish that a fellow fan had left their inspiration entirely private.
Songfic and me? Mea culpa... Stories that are totally songfic:
James and the Cold Gun, (Actually the song fic element is more strongly related to the song, 'A Thing Well Made' by The Muttonbirds, but how I could pass up the title...and I did incorporate the theme into the story); So Many Colours; Pictures of Sandburg (For which I totally got the idea when the spouse was listening to The Who's 'Pictures of Lily); Cloudbusting; Private Universe; Burning Clean; Three Strawpeople drabbles.
Stories that reference songs in their titles, where you might possibly regard the songs as soundtracks to the stories:
Living in the Gap; Strewn Towards a Heaven; Crossing the Line, Dirty Water.
Stories in the WIP and Dead end file that might have referenced a song or two:
West Horizon; Deserves a Quiet Night; Buried in the Backyard.
The shame of it all... :-) But still, I haven't done some things. I haven't had my guys sing - unless you count Blair singing along to Dr Hook to tease Jim in 'Living in the Gap'. I haven't quoted song lyrics in the body of the story. I don't think... (I sort of lie. Blair sings along to LA Woman in Coastal Shelf. Jim growls at him.)
Sometimes there's an unfortunate element of showing off in songfic. Besides wanting to borrow the emotional resonance of a song, the writer also wants to borrow the cred. And since cred is never something you can borrow, the attempt always fails.
But we persist in wanting to combine our pleasures: our boys and music. How many stories are there out there where one or both of the guys are singing in a band? Blair most commonly, presumably because he is a far more relaxed person than Jim. It's an irony, given that in his very musical family, GM is apparently very much a non-singer. But there is an irresistible attraction to Blair in leather pants, crouching down to roar out 'helllloooo, Cascade'. Although somewhere out there, there's a story that lets Jim borrow RB's talents and be a drummer. Scribe, maybe? Help? And in TS canon, Jim's musical appreciation is mentioned about as much as Blair's.
Still, as I look back over my own stories, I note that the notable songfic tends to be earlier. I could maybe argue that this indicates my maturing as a writer, but maturing implies immaturity somewhere along the line. Sometimes, that may well be the case. But I doubt (to borrow an example from SGA fandom) that Synecdochic's 'Freedom's Just Another Word' is an immature work. The story isn't songfic as such, but the author isn't ashamed to tap into the melancholy associations of the song's nostalgia for a happier time and a lost love.
'Isn't songfic as such'. Now that reminds me of discussions where it's claimed that Ursula Le Guin and Gene Wolfe don't write fantasy because they are good... And by golly, if I get a songfic bunny any time in the future, I will write the thing.
However, besides songfic, fans now have the options of fanmixes, and the idea of fannish soundtracks, and of course, vids. I have a storyteller's desire to make vids sometimes. Why has no-one ever made a TS vid to Elvis Costello's 'Every Day I Write the Book'? It's a consummate Blair POV song. I've heard songs I think are as good, but none that are better. I have lists in my head of songs that I would love to see as vids in a variety of fandoms.
Perhaps technology has overtaken the songfic. Almost anyone with access to a home computer can make vids. Even I could make a vid, if Windows Help wasn't such an oxymoron, and I wasn't such a late adopter.
But, y'know, when Sentinel Thursday offered its 'take back the songfic' challenge, like I said, I couldn't resist. Because songfic is always a pleasure for the writer, even if it's not always a pleasure for the reader, and really, I'm simply not in fandom to resist things.
Unless it's the guys doing karaoke.
Hmmm....